Saturday 16 January 2010

Un croissant sil vous plait


This brings back memory while I was in Grenoble, France some time ago. In any French town, one could only be drawn to boulangerie that dotted every corner of the street. I picked up a few useful sentences while in France in order to get along with everyday life, i.e bon jour, merci beaucoup, la dison sil vous plait, ca va? , tres bien and of course my favorite phrase while I visit any boulangerie: un croissant sil vous plait.
The freshly baked aroma of croissant is drawing me to the boulangerie every morning. Oooh, ooh so heavenly. I could easily get ready made croissants from Tesco but I'm so lazy to go out this morning as weather is damp and windy. Yes I know making croissant is quite tedious but aye, who can resist the freshly home baked croissant?

I followed this recipes from bbc good food:

Croissant
Ingredients (make 24 croissants)

  • 1kg/2.2lb strong white flour
  • 450g/1lb unsalted butter
  • pinch of salt
  • 570ml/1 pint water and milk mixed
  • 2 sachets easy bake yeast (14 grammes)
  • 1 egg for egg wash


1.Sift flour into a bowl, cut butter into small pieces, add a pinch of salt, yeast and with a pallet knife cut in water and milk. This makes a horrible sticky mess but turn onto a lightly floured table and carefully knead to make a cohesive dough.

2. Shape mixture into a rectangle and roll out to approximately 30cmx20cm/12inx8in. Fold over the top third, fold up the bottom third, seal each side with the side of your hand, then put into a plastic bag and chill for 30 minutes. Turn 90 degrees and roll again to another rectangle. Fold up bottom third and seal with the side of your hand. Chill as before for 30 minutes. Repeat two more times, chilling 30 minutes between each rolling. Return to plastic bag and refrigerate for an hour.

3. Remove from fridge and roll carefully into a big rectangle 50cm/30cm/24inx12in cut in half lengthways, divide each half into 12 triangles. Then from the widest edge of the triangle, roll up tightly and place in a crescent shape on a tray. Beat egg for egg wash and with care, egg wash croissant. Make sure you do not go over a cut edge with egg wash. This will stop them from rising properly if desired.

4. When frozen take off the tray and put into a plastic bag.

5. For use, remove from freezer the number required for breakfast, put onto baking tray and leave overnight. Put into a hot oven at 200C and bake for about 15 minutes until browned and risen.

You can also watch this video on step by step how it's make.
And one of my favorite baking websites - Joe Pastry who gives a lot of good tips on how to bake.

Serve with strawbery jam or marmalade. It's so crispy and flaky on the outside and soft on the inside. Hmnnnn............heavenly.

6 comments:

Perry R. Lim said...

I LURVE croissants!

adel said...

oh mine,homemade croissants...
so so so nice!

Christine Toh said...

Hi Perry,

Either you ask Fen to make it or you go to Delifrance bistro cafe :-)

Christine Toh said...

HI Adel,

Nice, nice and yes very nice :-)

susie lau said...

Hi Christine, the croissants look so good hm... i like to try. can i use just the ordinary flour instead of the strong white flour that you use? ^^

Christine Toh said...

Hi Susie,

The main reason for using bread flour is the content of the gluten in the flour which when acted with yeast able to form bready dough. Meanwhile with normal flour the content of gluten is lower and make not yield such a good bready dough. I didn't use plain flour to try before.
Also to note,the temperature is crucial, as the butter may melt at higher temperature, make sure it's cool when dealing with the butter.